Haunted London — The North Side of the Strand from Temple Bar to Charing Cross with Digressions to the South Part 2

In the year 1677 a fatal duel was fought under the Maypole, which had been snapped by a tempest in 1672. [294] One daybreak Mr. Robert Percival, a notorious duellist, only nineteen years of age, was found dead under the Maypole, with a deep wound in his left breast.

His drawn and bloody sword lay beside him.

His antagonist was never discovered, though great rewards were offered.

The only clue was a hat with a bunch of ribbons in it, suspected to belong to the celebrated Beau Fielding, but it was never traced home to him.

The elder brother, Sir Philip Percival, long after, violently attacked a total stranger whom he met in the streets of Dublin.

The spectators parted them.

Sir Philip could account for his conduct only by saying he felt urged on by an irresistible conviction that the man he struck at was his brother’s murderer.

[295] The Maypole, disused and decaying, was pulled down in 1713, when a new one, adorned with two gilt balls and a vane, was erected in its stead.

In 1718 the pole, being found in the way of the new church, was given to Sir Isaac Newton as a stand for a large French telescope that belonged to his friend Mr. Pound, the rector of Wanstead.

Saint Mary-le-Strand was begun in 1714, and consecrated in 1723-4. [296] It was one of the fifty ordered to be built in Queen Anne’s reign.

The old church, pulled down by that Ahab, the Protector Somerset, to make room for his ill-omened new palace, stood considerably nearer to the river.

Gibbs, the shrewd Aberdeen architect, who succeeded to Wren and Vanbrugh, and became famous by building St. Martin’s Church, reared also St. Mary’s. Gibbs, according to Walpole, was a mere plodding mechanic.

He certainly wanted originality, simplicity, and grace.

St. Mary’s is broken up by unmeaning ornament; the pagoda-like steeple is too high,[297] and crushes the church, instead of as it were blossoming from it.

One critic (Mr. Malton) alone is found to call St. Mary’s pleasant and picturesque; but I confess to having looked on it so long that I begin almost to forget its ugliness.

Gibbs himself tells us how he set to work upon this church.

It was his first commission after his return from Rome.

As the site was a very public one, he was desired to spare no cost in the ornamentation, so he framed it of two orders, making the lower walls (but for the absurd niches to hold nothing) solid, so as to keep out the noises of the street.

There was at first no steeple intended, only a small western campanile, or bell-turret;

but, eighty feet from the west front, there was to be erected a column 250 feet high, crowned by a statue of Queen Anne.

This absurdity was forgotten at the death of that rather insipid queen, and the stone still lying there, the thrifty parish authorities, unwilling to waste the materials, resolved to build a steeple.

The church being already twenty feet from the ground, it was necessary to spread it north and south, and so the church, originally square, became oblong.

Pope calls St. Mary’s Church bitterly the church that-- Collects “the _saints_ of Drury Lane.

”[298] Addison describes his Tory fox-hunter’s horror on seeing a church apparently being demolished, and his agreeable surprise when he found it was really a church being built.

[299] St. Mary’s was the scene of a tragedy during the proclamation of the short peace in 1802. Just as the heralds came abreast of Somerset House, a man on the roof of the church pressed forward too strongly against one of the stone urns, which gave way and fell into the street, striking down three persons: one of these died on the spot; the second, on his way to the hospital; and the third, two days afterwards.

A young woman and several others were also seriously injured.

The urn, which weighed two hundred pounds, carried away part of the cornice, broke a flag-stone below, and buried itself a foot deep in the earth.

The unhappy cause of this mischief fell back on the roof and fainted when he saw the urn fall.

He was discharged, no blame being attached to him.

It was found that the urn had been fastened by a wooden spike, instead of being clamped with iron.

[300] The church has been lately refitted in an ecclesiastical style, and filled with painted windows.

There are no galleries in its interior.

The ceiling is encrusted with ornament.

It contains a tablet to the memory of James Bindley, who died in 1818. He was the father of the Society of Antiquaries, and was a great collector of books, prints, and medals.

New Inn, in Wych Street, is an inn of Chancery, appertaining to the Middle Temple.

It was originally a public inn, bearing the sign of Our Lady the Virgin, and was bought by Sir John Fineux, Chief Justice of the King’s Bench, in the reign of King Edward IV.

, to place therein the students of the law then lodged in St. George’s Inn, in the little Old Bailey, which was reputed to have been the most ancient of all the inns of Chancery.

[301] Sir Thomas More, the luckless minister of Henry VIII.

, was a member of this inn till he removed to Lincoln’s Inn.

When the Great Seal was taken from this wise man, he talked of descending to “New Inn fare, wherewith many an honest man is well contented.

”[302] Addison makes the second best man of his band of friends (after Sir Roger de Coverley) a bachelor Templar; an excellent critic, with whom the time of the play is an hour of business.

“Exactly at five he passes through New Inn, crosses through Russell Court, and takes a turn at Wills’s till the play begins.

He has his shoes rubbed and his periwig powdered at the barber’s as you go into the Rose.

”[303] Wych Street derives its name from the old name for Drury Lane--_via de Aldewych_.

Till some recent improvements were effected in its tenants, it bore an infamous character, and was one of the disgraces of London.

The Olympic Theatre, in Wych Street, was built in 1805 by Philip Astley, a light horseman, who founded the first amphitheatre in London on the garden ground of old Craven House.

It was opened September 18, 1806, as the Olympic Pavilion, and burnt to the ground March 29, 1849. It was built out of the timbers of the captured French man-of-war, _La Ville de Paris_, in which William IV.

went out as midshipman.

The masts of the vessel formed the flies, and were seen still standing amidst the fire after the roof fell in.

In 1813 it was leased by Elliston, and called the Little Drury Lane Theatre.

Its great days were under the rule of Madame Vestris,[304] who, both as a singer and an actress, contributed to its success.

More recently it was under the able and successful management of the late Mr. Frederick Robson.

Born at Margate in 1821, he was early in life apprenticed to a copperplate engraver in Bedfordbury.

He appeared first, unsuccessfully, at a private theatre in Catherine Street, and played at the Grecian Saloon as a comic singer and low comedian from 1846 to 1849. In 1853 he joined Mr. Farren at the Olympic.

He there acquired a great reputation in various pieces--“The Yellow Dwarf,” “To oblige Benson,” “The Lottery Ticket,” and “The Wandering Minstrel,”--the last being an old farce originally written to ridicule the vagaries of Mr. Cochrane.

Lyon’s Inn, an inn of Chancery belonging to the Inner Temple, was originally a hostelry with the sign of the Lion.

It was purchased by gentlemen students in Henry VIII.

’s time, and converted into an inn of Chancery.

[305] It degenerated into a haunt of bill-discounters and Bohemians of all kinds, good and bad, clever and rascally, and remained a dim, mouldy place till 1861, when it was pulled down.

Its site is now occupied by the Globe Theatre.

Just before the demolition of the inn, when I visited it, a washerwoman was hanging out wet and flopping clothes on the site of Mr. William Weare’s chambers.

On Friday, 24th of October 1823, Mr. William Weare, of No. 2 Lyon’s Inn, was murdered in Gill’s Hill Lane, Hertfordshire, between Edgware and St. Alban’s. His murderer was Mr. John Thurtell, son of the Mayor of Norwich, and a well-known gambler, betting man, and colleague of prize-fighters.

Under pretence of driving him down for a shooting excursion, Thurtell shot Weare with a pistol, and when he leaped out of the chaise, pursued him and cut his throat.

He then sank the body in a pond in the garden of his friend and probable accomplice, Probert, a spirit merchant, and afterwards removed it to a slough on the St. Alban’s road.

His confederate, Hunt, a public singer, turned king’s evidence, and was transported for life.

Thurtell was hanged at Hertford.

He pleaded that Weare had robbed him of £300 with false cards at Blind Hookey, and he had sworn revenge; but it appeared that he had planned several other murders, and all for money.

Probert was afterwards hanged in Gloucestershire for horse-stealing.

At the sale of the building materials some Jews were observed to be very eager to acquire the figure of the lion that adorned one of the walls.

There were various causes assigned for this eagerness.

Some said that a Jew named Lyons had originally founded the inn; others declared that the lion was considered to be an emblem of the Lion of the tribe of Judah.

Directly the auctioneer knocked it down the Jewish purchaser drew a knife, mounted the ladder, and struck his weapon into the lion.

“S’help me, Bob!

” said he, in a tone of disgust, “if they didn’t tell me it was lead, and it’s only stone arter all!

” Gay, who speaks of the dangers of “mazy Drury Lane,” gives Catherine Street a very bad character.

He describes the courtesans, with their new-scoured manteaus and riding-hoods or muffled pinners, standing near the tavern doors, or carrying empty bandboxes, and feigning errands to the Change.

[306] The street is now almost entirely occupied by newspaper publishers.

The _Morning Herald_, the _Court Journal_, the _Naval and Military Gazette_, the _Gardener’s Gazette_, the _Builder_, the _Weekly Register_, and the _Court Gazette_, all either are or have been published in Catherine Street.

Scott’s Sanspareil Theatre was opened here about 1810 for the performance of operettas, dancing, and pantomimes.

[307] In September 1741 a man named James Hall was executed at the end of Catherine Street.

The Maypole close to St. Mary’s Church is said to have been the first place in London where hackney coaches were allowed to stand.

Coaches were first introduced into England from Hungary in 1580 by Fitzalan, Earl of Arundel; but for a time they were thought effeminate.

The Thames watermen especially railed against them, as might be expected.

In the year 1634, a Captain Baily who had accompanied Raleigh in his famous expedition to Guiana, started four hackney coaches, with drivers in liveries, at the Maypole; but as, in the year 1613, sixty hackney coaches from London[308] plied at Stourbridge fair, perhaps there had been coach-stands in the streets before Baily’s time.

In 1625 there were only twenty coaches in London; in 1666, under Charles II.

, the number had so increased that the king issued a proclamation complaining of the coaches blocking up the narrow streets and breaking up the pavement, and forbade coach-stands altogether.

Peter Molyn Tempest, the engraver of “The Cries of London,” published at the end of King William’s reign, lived in the Strand opposite Somerset House.

“The Cries” were designed by Marcellus Laroon, a Dutch painter (1653-1702), who painted draperies for Kneller.

[309] He was celebrated for his conversation pieces and his knack of imitating the old masters.

Tempest’s quaint advertisement of the “Cries” in the _London Gazette_, May 28 and 31, 1688, runs thus:-- “There is now published the Cryes and Habits of London, lately drawn after the life in great variety of actions, curiously engraved upon fifty copper-plates, fit for the ingenious and lovers of art.

Printed and sold by P. Tempest, over against Somerset House, in the Strand.

” The _Morning Chronicle_, whose office was opposite Somerset House, was started in 1770. It was to Perry, of the _Morning Chronicle_, that Coleridge, when penniless and about to enlist in a cavalry regiment, sent a poem and a request for a guinea, which he got.

Hazlitt was theatrical critic to this paper, succeeding Lord Campbell in the post.

In 1810 David Ricardo began his letters on the depreciation of the currency in the _Chronicle_.

James Perry, whose career we have no room to follow, lived in great style at Tavistock House, the house afterwards occupied for many years by Mr. Charles Dickens.

_The Sketches by Boz_ of Charles Dickens first appeared in the columns of the _Chronicle_.

The last _Morning Chronicle_ appeared on Wednesday, March 19, 1862. Latterly the paper was said to have been in the pay of the Emperor of France.

No. 346, at the east corner of Wellington Street, now the office of the _Law Times_, the _Queen_, and the _Field_, was Doyley’s celebrated warehouse for woollen articles.

Dryden, in his _Kind Keeper_, speaks of “Doyley” petticoats; Steele, in his _Guardian_,[310] of his “Doyley” suit;

while Gay, in the _Trivia_, describes a “Doyley” as a poor defence against the cold.

Doyley’s warehouse stood on the ancient site of Wimbledon House, built by Sir Edward Cecil, son to the first Earl of Exeter, and created Viscount Wimbledon by Charles I. The house was burnt to the ground in 1628, and the day before the viscount had had part of his house at Wimbledon accidentally blown up by gunpowder.

Pennant, when a boy, was brought by his mother to a large glass shop, a little beyond Wimbledon House; the old man who kept it remembered Nell Gwynne coming to the shop when he was an apprentice; her footman, a country lad, got fighting in the street with some men who had abused his mistress.

[311] Mr. Doyley was a much respected warehouseman of Dr. Johnson’s time, whose family had resided in their great old house, next to Hodsall the banker’s, at the corner of Wellington Street, ever since Queen Anne’s time.

The dessert napkins called Doyleys derived their name from this firm.

Mr. Doyley’s house was built by Inigo Jones, and forms a prominent feature in old engravings of the Strand, as it had a covered entrance that ran out like a promontory into the carriage-way.

It was pulled down about 1782. [312] Mr. Doyley, a man of humour and a friend of Garrick and Sterne, was a frequenter of the Precinct Club, held at the Turk’s Head, opposite his own house.

The rector of St. Mary’s attended the same club, and enjoyed the seat of honour next the fire.

[Illustration: THE OLD ROMAN BATH, STRAND.

] Not far from this stood the Strand Bridge, which crossed the street, and received the streams flowing from the higher grounds down Catharine Street to the Thames.

Strand Lane, hard by on the south, famous still for its old Roman bath, passed under the arch, and led to a water stair or landing pier.

Addison, in his bright pleasant way, describes landing there one morning with ten sail of apricot boats, after having put in at Nine Elms for melons, consigned by Mr. Cuffe of that place to Sarah Sewell and Company at their stall in Covent Garden.

[313] The _Morning Post_, whose office is in Wellington Street, was started in 1772; when almost defunct it was bought in 1796 by Daniel Stuart, and Christie the auctioneer, who gave only £600 for copyright, house, and plant.

Coleridge, Southey, Lamb, Wordsworth, and Mackintosh all wrote for Stuart’s paper.

Coleridge commenced his political papers in 1797, and on his return from Germany (November 1799) joined the badly-paid staff, but refused to become a parliamentary reporter.

Fox declared in the House of Commons that Coleridge’s essays had led to the rupture of the peace of Amiens, an announcement which led to a pursuit by a French frigate, when the poet left Rome, where he then was, and sailed from Leghorn.

Lamb wrote facetious paragraphs at sixpence a-piece.

[314] The _Morning Post_ soon became second only to the _Chronicle_, and the great paper for booksellers’ advertisements.

It is mentioned by Byron as the organ of the aristocracy and of West End society, and it has maintained that position to the present time with little change.

The _Athenæum_, whose office is in Wellington Street, is identified with the name of Mr. (afterwards) Sir C. Wentworth Dilke.

He was born in 1789, and was originally in the Navy Pay Office.

He bought the paper, which had been unsuccessful since 1828 under its originator, that shifty adventurer, Mr. J.

S.

Buckingham, and also under Mr. John Sterling.

Under his care it gradually grew into a sound property, and became what it now is, the _Times_ of weekly papers.

Its editor, Mr. Hervey, the author of many well-known poems, was replaced in 1853 by Mr. Hepworth Dixon, under whom it steadily throve, till his retirement in 1871. A little farther up the street is the office of _All the Year Round_, a weekly periodical which, in 1859, took the place of _Household Words_, started by Mr. Charles Dickens in 1850. It contains essays by the best writers of the day, graphic descriptions of current events, and continuous stories.

Mrs. Gaskell, Mr. Wilkie Collins, Charles Reade, Lord Lytton, Mr. Sala, and Mr. Dickens himself, are among those who have published novels in its pages.

The original Lyceum was built in 1765 as an exhibition-room for the Society of Arts, by Mr. James Payne, an architect, on ground once belonging to Exeter House.

The society splitting, and the Royal Academy being founded at Somerset House in 1768, the Lyceum Society became insolvent.

Mr. Lingham, a breeches-maker, then purchased the room, and let it out to Flockton for his Puppet-show and other amusements.

About 1794 Dr. Arnold partly rebuilt it as a theatre, but could not obtain a licence through the opposition of the winter houses.

[315] It was next door to the shop of Millar the publisher.

The Lyceum in 1789-94 was the arena of all experimenters--of Charles Dibdin and his “Sans Souci,” of the ex-soldier Astley’s feats of horsemanship, of Cartwright’s “Musical Glasses,” of Philipstal’s successful “Phantasmagoria.

” Lonsdale’s “Egyptiana” (paintings of Egyptian scenes, by Porter, Mulready, Pugh, and Cristall), with a lecture, was a failure.

Here Ker Porter exhibited his large pictures of Lodi, Acre, and the siege of Seringapatam.

Then came Palmer with his “Portraits,” Collins with his “Evening Brush,” Incledon with his “Voyage to India,” Bologna with his “Phantascopia,” and Lloyd with his “Astronomical Exhibition.

” Subscription concerts, amateur theatricals, debating societies, and schools of defence were also tried here.

One day it was a Roman Catholic chapel; next day the “Panther Mare and Colt,” the “White Negro Girl,” or the “Porcupine Man” held their levee of dupes and gapers in its changeful rooms.

[316] In 1809 Dr. Arnold’s son obtained a licence for an English opera-house.

Shortly afterwards the Drury Lane company commenced performing here, their own theatre having been burnt.

Mr. T.

Sheridan was then manager.

In 1815 Mr. Arnold erected the predecessor of the present theatre, on an enlarged scale, at an expense of nearly £80,000, and it was opened in 1816. In 1817 the experiment of two short performances on the same evening was unsuccessfully tried.

On April 1, 1818, Mr. Mathews, the great comedian, began here his entertainment called “Mail-coach Adventures,” which ran forty nights.

The Beef-steak Club was established in the reign of Queen Anne (before 1709).

[317] The _Spectator_ mentions it, 1710-11. The club met in a noble room at the top of Covent Garden Theatre, and never partook of any dish but beef-steaks.

Their Providore was their president and wore their badge, a small gold gridiron, hung round his neck by a green silk riband.

[318] Estcourt had been a tavern-keeper, and is mentioned in a poem of Parnell’s, who was himself too fond of wine.

He died in 1712. Steele gives a delightful sketch of him.

He had an excellent judgment, he was a great mimic, and he told an anecdote perfectly well.

His well-turned compliments were as fine as his smart repartees.

“It is to Estcourt’s exquisite talent more than to philosophy,” says Steele, “that I owe the fact that my person is very little of my care, and it is indifferent to me what is said of my shape, my air, my manner, my speech, or my address.

It is to poor Estcourt I chiefly owe that I am arrived at the happiness of thinking nothing a diminution of myself but what argues a depravity of my will.

” The kindly essay ends beautifully.

“None of those,” says the true-hearted man, “will read this without giving him some sorrow for their abundant mirth, and one gush of tears for so many bursts of laughter.

I wish it were any honour to the pleasant creature’s memory that my eyes are too much suffused to let me go on.

” Later, Churchill and Wilkes, those partners in dissoluteness and satire, were members of this social club.

After Estcourt, that jolly companion, Beard the singer, became president of this jovial and agreeable company.

It was an old custom at theatres to have a Beef-steak Club that met every Saturday, and to which authors and wits were invited.

In 1749 Mr. Sheridan, the manager, founded one at Dublin.

There were fifty or sixty members, chiefly noblemen and members of Parliament, and no performer was admitted but witty Peg Woffington, who wore man’s dress, and was president for a whole season.

[319] A Beef-steak Society was founded in 1735 by John Rich, the great harlequin, and manager of Covent Garden Theatre, and George Lambert, the scene-painter.

[320] Lambert, being much visited by authors, wits, and noblemen, whilst painting, and being too hurried to go to a tavern, used to have a steak cooked in the room, inviting his guests to share his snug and savoury but hurried meal.

The fun of these accidental and impromptu dinners led to a club being started, which afterwards moved to a more convenient room in the theatre.

After many years the place of meeting was changed to the Shakspere Tavern, where Mr. Lambert’s portrait, painted by Hudson, Reynolds’s pompous master, was one of the decorations of the club-room.

[321] They then returned to the theatre, but being burned out in 1812, adjourned to the Bedford.

Lambert was the merriest of fellows, yet without buffoonery or coarseness.

His manners were most engaging, he was social with his equals, and perfectly easy with richer men.

[322] He was also a great leader of fun at old Slaughter’s artist-club.

The club throve down to about 1869, when it was dissolved; steaks were perennial as a dish, whatever the wit may have been, to the last.

Twenty-four noblemen and gentlemen, each of whom might bring a friend, partook of a five o’clock dinner of steaks in a room of their own behind the scenes at the Lyceum Theatre every Saturday from November till June.

They called themselves “The Steaks,” disclaimed the name of “Club,” and dedicated their hours to “Beef and Liberty,” as their ancestors did in the anti-Walpole days.

[323] Their room was a little typical Escurial.

The doors, wainscot, and floor, were of stout oak, emblazoned with gridirons, like a chapel of St. Laurence.

The cook was seen at his office through the bars of a vast gridiron, and the original gridiron of the society (the survivor of two terrific fires) held a conspicuous position in the centre of the ceiling.

This club descended lineally from Wilkes’s and from Lambert’s. To the end there was Attic salt enough to sprinkle over “the Steaks,” and to justify the old epicure’s lines to the club:-- “He that of honour, wit, and mirth partakes, May be a fit companion o’er beef-steaks;

His name may be to future times enrolled In Estcourt’s book, whose gridiron’s framed of gold.

”[324] Its gridiron and other treasures were sold by auction, and fetched fabulous prices.

Dr. William King, the author of the above quoted verses, was an indolent, wrong-headed genius.

Some three years after the Restoration he took part against the irascible Bentley in the dispute about the Epistles of Phalaris, satirised Sir Hans Sloane, and supported Sacheverell.

He wrote _The Art of Cookery_, _Dialogues of the Dead_, _The Art of Love_, and _Greek Mythology for Schools_.

Recklessly throwing up his Irish Government appointment, he came to London.

There Swift got him appointed manager of the _Gazette_; but being idle, and fond of the bottle, he resigned his office in six months, and went to live at a friend’s house in the garden grounds between Lambeth and Vauxhall.

He died in 1712, in lodgings opposite Somerset House, procured for him by his relation, Lord Clarendon.

He was buried in the north cloisters of Westminster Abbey, close to his master, Dr. Knipe, to whom he had dedicated his _School Mythology_.